The only thing I can suggest, is dont try to think too hard. (yes this post is now old). If you sit there to yourself thinking "what game can i make", you will probably just come up with ideas of games that you have played before.
What if you took something that has happened in your life, slap a different theme onto it, expand the idea and turn it into a game. Here is an example:
- Building a tower of cards
- theme it around placing girders instead of cards, set it on a building site with cute builder characters / cranes / etc that build your tower.
- add in some special blocks, large chunks you have to prepare for and balance
- what about earth quakes ?
- what about multiplayer head to head with special attacks ?
- maybe have it so you have a rock climber that you have to create a path for in order to collect items ?
- maybe you have to support a crumbling building with scaffolding/reinforcements.
That just rolled off my head by thinking outside the box of "game ideas" but rather "fun/normal activities"
Heres another:
- Opening a door.
- what if you had a screen of various doors on mini houses
- people could turn up and you have to answer the door
- there could people you dont want to answer to, loosing points
- there could people who only stay for a very short amount of time before leaving (bonus points)
- there could be different types of residents in different themed houses, these people would prefer certain visitors (eg hippy house doesn't want to see canvasing politician, christian house doesn't want to see jehovas witnesses)
- more and more people could move into your neighbourhood
- doors could be jammed requiring more work to open
- a frantic click fest.
What if you took something that has happened in your life, slap a different theme onto it, expand the idea and turn it into a game. Here is an example:
- Building a tower of cards
- theme it around placing girders instead of cards, set it on a building site with cute builder characters / cranes / etc that build your tower.
- add in some special blocks, large chunks you have to prepare for and balance
- what about earth quakes ?
- what about multiplayer head to head with special attacks ?
- maybe have it so you have a rock climber that you have to create a path for in order to collect items ?
- maybe you have to support a crumbling building with scaffolding/reinforcements.
That just rolled off my head by thinking outside the box of "game ideas" but rather "fun/normal activities"
Heres another:
- Opening a door.
- what if you had a screen of various doors on mini houses
- people could turn up and you have to answer the door
- there could people you dont want to answer to, loosing points
- there could people who only stay for a very short amount of time before leaving (bonus points)
- there could be different types of residents in different themed houses, these people would prefer certain visitors (eg hippy house doesn't want to see canvasing politician, christian house doesn't want to see jehovas witnesses)
- more and more people could move into your neighbourhood
- doors could be jammed requiring more work to open
- a frantic click fest.